Cavendish wins second stage of Missouri

Mark Cavendish (Columbia-HTC) underlined his complete dominance of bunch sprints by winning the second stage of the Tour of Missouri with a blistering turn of pace.

Thor Hushovd’s Cervelo team took control of the bunch on the run-in to the line in Cape Girardeau, and launched the Norwegian Tour de France green jersey winner to the front.

After being delivered to the perfect spot by team-mate George Hincapie, Cavendish stuck to Hushovd’s back wheel and then came around him with his trademark, perfectly-timed turn of speed in the final 200 metres.

By the time Cavendish hit the finish line, the rest of the bunch were well back, giving the 24-year-old Manxman his second stage win out of two, and his 23rd win of 2009. Hushovd came in second, with Juan Jose Haedo (Saxo Bank) third.

Cavendish maintains his lead of the overall classification.

Earlier in the race, Timothy Duggan (Garmin-Slipstream) and Francois Parisien (Planet Energy) attempted to escape to the finish. The daring duo held off the bunch until the dying kilometres, when the sprinters’ teams wound up the pace and swallowed them up.

Last year’s winner Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Slipstream) withdrew from the race after fracturing a bone in his hand as a result of a crash during yesterday’s opening stage.

Tomorrow’s third stage runs from Farmington to Rolla and covers 183.9km. It’s a lumpy stage that may see the overall contenders attempting to make their mark… or perhaps a daring breakaway.

Is there any stopping this man?……… 23 wins this season and over 50 overall. At this rate he could easily get 100 or maybe even 200 wins on his palmares.

A while ago CW ran a table ranking career wins of the top 10 UK cyclists (probably to show that it wouldn’t be long until ~Cav was top of the table). Maybe now they should show how far Cav needs to go to overhaul everyone else in the world.